There was talk about renaming the Krugman thread for this purpose, but that seems to be going nowhere. Besides which, I feel the Krugman thread should be left to discuss Krugman while this thread can be used for more general economic discussion.
Discuss:
- The merits of competing theories.
- The role of the government in managing the economy.
- The causes of and solutions to our current economic woes.
- Comparisons between the economic systems of different countries.
- Theoretical and existing alternatives to our current market system.
edited 17th Dec '12 10:58:52 AM by Topazan
Hard, yes. Impossible, no. Mars has all the resources we need, but exploiting them will take enormous investment, and the hardest part by far is getting all that stuff there. This is the reason why there are steel tanks flying around in Texas.
Say, was anyone joking about Musk not swimming in money?
Mars has sunlight, water, carbon dioxide, and a whole host of minerals available in its soil. It exists in a zone within the solar system where it is possible to sustain liquid water within pressurized environments. It is physically possible to build a self-sustaining colony there, although it will be an extraordinarily challenging environment for at least hundreds of years.
Terraforming Mars is a much longer term goal, but people should be able to live sustainably on it.
Edit: We were just discussing Musk's riches in the context of wealth taxes over the last few pages. Tesla's meteoric rise is partly a testament to the runaway success of the company itself, but I'd say it's even more indicative of a stock market that is desperately hungry for growth stories amid an economic slowdown and long-term secular stagnation.
In fact, his net worth could be even higher if he exercised the stock options under his compensation plan. To date, he has not.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 8th 2021 at 10:06:19 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Elon Musk is a union busting
, worker-mistreating
, COVID-denying
, huckster
vicious idiot
.
He's a terrible person and a terrible example who has actually accomplished nothing for mankind other than making himself the world's richest man.
"All you Fascists bound to lose.""Bare minimums" doesn't mean it's not self-sustaining. All that requires is that it not be dependent on shipments from Earth to survive and grow.
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Can we please not? Most of those stories are mistruths, intentional misrepresentations, or straight up lies. The COVID thing is true, however.
Come on man, lets not pretend the guy isn't a union busting shitheel.
Shitty people and shitty companies can contribute lots of good things to the world and innovative technology while still being terrible.
Hell think of all the genuinely incredible things Boeing has done and is doing for aviation as a science and in terms of technological advancement and aircraft development and just yesterday they took a $2.5 billion plea deal with the DoJ for conspiracy and fraud.
Edited by LeGarcon on Jan 8th 2021 at 10:22:01 AM
Oh really when?There are multiple sides to the stories that you need to pay attention to. For example, Tesla's Fremont plant does not have UAW representation largely because the United Auto Workers vehemently opposes battery-electric vehicles. This opposition is partly because the union is captured by the petroleum industry and partly because BEVs require fewer labor hours to build and much less service. If the entire auto industry electrifies, a lot of auto workers are out of jobs, and they don't like that.
Tesla pays its workers quite well and provides excellent benefits.
Similarly, the claims of injuries and safety problems at the Nevada plant were exaggerated by a self-aggrandizing, self-styled whistleblower who became the champion of the anti-Tesla online movement and lost a lawsuit against Tesla. He also appears to have serious mental health issues.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 8th 2021 at 10:24:06 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I for one am more willing to trust The Guardian's reporting than a billionaire who once accused a rescue diver of being a pedophile for no particular reason other than to soothe his own fragile ego. I think it's very disengenious to act like Musk's many documented misdeeds are all "fake news! fake news!" and then prop him up as a symbol of moral capitalism.
He's already a billionaire with a ridiculous amount of influence on society, Fighteer, he doesn't need you to act as his bouncer.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."It's also silly to stand on false reporting just because you think it justifies your desire to dislike someone. The diver thing was a two-sided affair, and it was litigated in Musk's favor.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Damn. Work kept me busy and I failed to gather something cohesive to reply to the labor theoy of value question of two pages ago, which I wanted to get to. Then work choked me and I missed discussion on Elon, which seems to be summarized to the meme
of how apparently he can't be criticized without bitter tears being wept for him and how apparently it's ok for Stock to simultaneously be imaginary not real money so it's not ok to tax it, but it's still ok to use it as something that we take into account to not pay the workers higher salaries.
Edited by Aszur on Jan 8th 2021 at 9:34:12 AM
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothesThe pedo guy incident isn't exactly a good look for him either, Fighteer. The guy hired a private investigator with the sole purpose of digging up dirt on a guy he didn't like, for having the audacity of saving a bunch of children before he could.
He was being an egotistical jackass.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesYep, he was being a jackass. I completely agree. It also turns out that the PI sold Elon a fake story to get his money, so there's plenty of shame to go around. Also, the diver was being an absolute jackass for refusing Musk's help with the trapped children, who seem to have been forgotten about in the story. Lastly, the defamation suit was frivolous on its face. It wasn't a case of "rich man beats poor man"; it was a case of "two grown men yelling insults at each other until one sues."
Elon doesn't need me defending him, that's completely true. But we should resist falsehood whenever it appears.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 8th 2021 at 10:40:10 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"What is the world's richest man if not a obvious victim of persecution by the crooked news media? One wonders how he sleeps at night with the famously unreliable The Guardian printing out hit pieces on him.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Oddly, yes. It's frankly kind of silly how major publications have been consistently negative on Musk and Tesla for years. You can find a number of their supposedly objective reporters deeply involved in social media circles designed to amplify those negative stories and shut out positive ones. Still, this is not an economics topic so I must request we drop it.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The diver refused Musk's help on the basis that Musk's idea of a submarine was not going to work at all, and Musk was ignoring expert diving advice, thinking he knew better. And the PI being a fraud does not change the fact that Musk hired him to smear the diver. There may be more to the story, as you say, but it hardly exonerates Musk.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesSmoke and fire.
I'm fine with dropping this, but I feel like every couple of pages you put up Elon Musk in a pedestal and sidestep the entirety of his well-documented misdeeds (and deny they happened when they're brought up) and that's a rather troubling pattern.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I freely admit that Musk has done stupid and irresponsible things. I do, however, challenge the amplification of those stories when set against the massive amount of good that he is trying to achieve.
It's especially important to consider the motives of those doing the amplifying. Elon is opposed not for his personal attributes and beliefs but specifically because of his economic agenda, which strikes at the heart of major, entrenched industries who together have a lot more capital and influence than he does. When you challenge a big dog, the big dog attacks you back. Elon is trying to knock down the oil industry, the auto industry, and the space industry. You make a lot of enemies doing that.
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The submarine that Musk wanted his team to build ended up being delivered too late, but it was used for other purposes. Don't mistake good intentions for egotism... or at least don't deny them just because they may also happen to serve an ego.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 8th 2021 at 10:46:15 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"This thread isn’t about either Musk or Tesla. If you want to talk about Musk’s morality and/or vision then try and start a thread for it.
Now could we get back to Economics?
I’ll restate my question from before, from both a practical perspective and a moral one what’s different about taxing ownership of a plot of land and taxing shares in a company?
Both are assets with significant value, they are both normally purchased with money that has already been taxed, both have their value chance from year to year depending on the market, both can become so valuable that it might not be possible to pay a percentage tax of that value without having to sell part of ones ownership.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
I think that'd be fine at least for me — maybe just make it clear what the conext of your response is.
Best I understand the difference is that land and other real estate exists already regardless of whether any person is there doing anything with it or not. Businesses OTOH necessarily requires some human force (whether an individual, group of people, government organization, or somesuch) to invest their time and energy into creating and maintaining it.
Edited by megarockman on Jan 8th 2021 at 10:57:56 AM
The damned queen and the relentless knight.

Oh, I don't think Musk is a fraud, but I do think he is a little insane about the colonizing Mars thing.
And I think it would be very hard to create an economically independent colony on Mars, which is barren and inhospitable and doesn't have much in the way of natural (that is, non-manmade) resources.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times